Staying the Mind

Amen. Amen. Well, please turn in your Bible to Isaiah 26.

We've just finished Isaiah 25, and we're moving on to Isaiah 26. This section between chapters 24 through 27 summarize all the oracles against the nations that came before and speak of the result of what

God is doing in the earth. He's going to judge the nations of the world, and he's going to protect his people.

Now, last week, at the end of 24, we talked about trusting in God and what that looks like.

And here, the focus is a little more on the result of trusting in the Lord. This is a song that the people sing in the day that they are saved.

So let's go ahead and please stand for the reading of God's word. Going to read just the first six verses of Isaiah 26.

In that day, this song will be sung in the land of Judah. We have a strong city.

He sets up salvation as walls and bulwarks. Open the gates that the righteous nation that keeps faith may enter in.

You keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.

Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock, for he has humbled the inhabitants of the height.

The lofty city, he lays it low, lays it to the ground, casts it to the dust. The foot tramples it, the feet of the poor, the steps of the needy.

You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this song.

We thank you for your salvation, for your foundations, the gates and the walls of your city, for your wonderful protection, for the great victory that you have given through Jesus Christ over death and sin.

And God, I pray that you would help us to fix our eyes on him today, that we might truly understand these things and take full advantage of that truth.

In Jesus' name, amen. So here, this is a song that people will sing in the day of their salvation.

It's a song about God's protection. It's a song about the victory that he has provided.

It is a song about how all those who trust in him have both that defense and have that victory, and how he works that defense and victory.

It's very similar to a song that came before in Isaiah. In Isaiah 12, we have this song.

You will say in that day, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away that you might comfort me.

Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and will not be afraid, for the

Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. Now, earlier in Isaiah, in that section of Isaiah from chapter six onward to, or maybe chapter seven onward to 13, it's talking about the assault of Assyria.

So in particular, in mind there is God's deliverance from the nation of Assyria.

Now here, it's more broad, because having just talked about all the different nations that are against the land of Judah, God talks about the salvation that he provides from those nations.

And so this, this is a song for any day of salvation. This is a song that refers to later when the people of Israel will be taken out of the land of Babylon.

It refers to the salvation that Christ has provided on the cross, and it refers to the great day of salvation that's still awaiting us in the future, when we are resurrected from the dead on the day of judgment, and vindicated before God's enemies, and live forever with Jesus Christ.

In that day. So when you think about what that day is, and we've talked about it before, in all the chapters previous, when in that day it's being used, that Isaiah really is referring to any day of salvation, whether it be the first coming or the second coming, and even applying to Israel and the salvation that God provides for them from Babylon.

He says, in that day, this song will be sung in the land of Judah. We have a strong city.

He sets up salvation as walls and bulwarks. This is precisely how the

New Testament describes the salvation that God has provided, that he has built a city, that he has established

Zion, that God's church is gathered together on the foundation which

Christ has built. Ephesians 2 .20 talks about the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, and we truly do have a strong and glorious city, and it is being built stronger and stronger.

Consider how the church was many, many years ago, just in the early days of the church, facing persecution, not that we don't face it now, but very small as they were spreading to nation to nation, and now this has spread to many nations of the earth.

There are still nations to be reached, but God, as he says in Ephesians, is growing his church in maturity, and that's something that we can really appreciate as we recognize the fact that we stand on something that has been built up for two millennia.

God really has done some wonderful work to build up his church. If you consider what cities looked like many years ago, 2 ,000 years ago, imagine what

Jerusalem looked like back then, and they talked about it as being a mighty city. We would look at something like that, with walls however high they were, as probably being pretty small compared to the cities that we see today, where whole buildings are larger than a city might have been at that time.

Very similarly, God has continued to mature his people, to grow them in strength and understanding, and that's something that I think is often missing on us.

We often think of the highlights that we see in the Bible. We see all the times when

God miraculously saved people, or people did great things of faith, and we don't realize that those are just the highlights.

There were a lot of difficulties, a lot of difficult times that reflect.

I think if we were to see all those times in between those highlights, we would realize just how much

God has built, just what he has given us today. Many more believers in all the earth, and then on top of that, the preservation of his word, the fact that we have it in Bibles that are printed, and everyone has access to them, it's just an incredible, incredible thing.

Consider also the advantage we have, in that there have been so many men before us who have studied

God's word, and synthesized what it said into various documents, for example, the confession that we studied earlier in my

Sunday school class, and in the various books that have been written. Now, please understand what

I'm saying, but consider the question of whether or not the apostles understood some of the truths that we have synthesized today.

Now, yes, God has given, he has given scripture through the apostles, they were inspired, their word is authoritative, and the only foundation, the only infallible rule of faith and practice, and yet, those foundation blocks that they were building, that we have been able to learn from, and to understand the implications of these truths, for example, consider how the doctrine of the

Trinity was understood over the several centuries that came later. Now, did

Paul understand that Jesus was God? Yes, absolutely. Did all the disciples understand that?

Yes, I believe they absolutely did, but were they able to think about the various nuanced questions that came later?

I don't think a lot of those questions had been asked, and so I don't think they had a chance to think about how they would have been answered.

There's something really wonderful about the fact that God has continued to mature his church, to think about all these detailed things that he has provided the sole infallible rule, and that he has, since then, by his

Holy Spirit, led his church into truth, so that we might understand him more and more, and so that the gospel might spread more and more across the nations.

I think this is a truth that we don't often really appreciate, just how much we have that he has given in that maturing of the church.

And he has also providentially, not just built this church up, but protected it from all kinds of things that threatened to destroy it.

Early on in the church's history, maybe someone looking from the outside who didn't understand the promises of God might say that this would not last.

This movement centered around a man who was crucified, there's no way this is going to last.

This is just a fad that some people are interested in. And yet, looking at the history of the church, look at how much God's church has expanded by his providential protection.

Providence, meaning what he has provided. He has provided protection for his people. Now, we ought to appreciate these things, give thanks to God for these things, and moreover, truly understanding that protection.

Just have great confidence as we go out into the world, knowing that he is protecting us.

Maybe not the way we want to be protected, but the way that is ultimately for our good and for his kingdom's good.

God cares much about his kingdom. He is going to protect it exactly as he sees fit.

And we should go forward with the mindset that he is protecting us. You know, the one who, as it says in verse three, has his mind stayed on God, is able to keep that mindset, is able to keep that mindset that he is protecting us, and we have no need to fear.

Now, it says in verse two, open the gates that the righteous nation that keeps faith may enter in.

This is a picture of victory. Right before, it was talking about strong defenses. Now, it's talking about a strong offense.

You open the gates of the city so that a victorious army can enter in.

These are God's people entering into the city. Now, if you're familiar with the

Bible, especially with the Psalms, this might conjure up a couple of other images. So I'd like to go to two

Psalms where this is especially relevant. Psalm 24, seven, says lift up your heads,

O gates, and be lifted, O ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in.

Who is this king of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty. The Lord, mighty in battle.

Lift up your heads, O gates, and lift them up, O ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in.

Who is this king of glory? The Lord of hosts. He is the king of glory.

Who is this speaking of? This is speaking of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is victorious. He has, through the cross, defeated sin, defeated death, defeated the devil, and he has been welcomed in victorious.

Now, it says also in Psalm 118, verse 17, I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the

Lord. The Lord has disciplined me severely, but he has not given me over to death.

Open the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them, and give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the

Lord. The righteous shall enter through it. I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

Now, you may be aware the New Testament quotes this verse and interprets it as speaking of Jesus Christ, that he is the cornerstone.

In fact, he is the one here who did not stay in death, but lived.

He is the one who was brought back from the dead and who comes into the city victorious. And what is marvelous about what

Isaiah 26 is saying is it's not just the king who comes in victorious, but all the people that he is leading.

He leads us as a victorious people, even though we are not the ones who have won the battle.

We have done nothing. It is only him working, and then him working through us.

Primarily him working on the cross through his death and resurrection, and then secondarily him, after the fact, working through us to accomplish his purposes.

Now, with that kind of victorious mindset that Christ has already won the victory and that he is advancing his kingdom, we should be able to, as we're in the world, be able to speak confidently of these things, knowing that we are on the winning side.

We should not cower or fear as though victory is an uncertain thing.

Not only is it certain, it's already been accomplished. Now, when

I was, and let me just give you an example of what it might mean to be offensive. You know, a lot of people keep their heads down, right?

They think, oh, I just have to keep my head down for this next phase of life or with this friendship or in this job and, you know, get through and, you know, not say too much about my faith.

But the more you do that and you keep doing that and you think that, oh, I'll do that later, I'll tell people about Jesus later, you wake up one day and you kept your head down the entire time, you never spoke about Jesus.

You never told them about Jesus. I know that when I was growing up, I grew up in a

Christian home, I was saved at an early age, and I knew that it was important to evangelize, to share the gospel, and I wanted to do that even in a formal capacity.

But I did not, I thought that I'd do missions later. You know, I'd get involved in a career, you know, do school, get in a job, and then figure that all out later.

And when I finally got a job, you know, moved out here, started working, I realized, what was

I waiting for? Why did I think I should do all that first and then look into what

I felt the Lord was calling me to? I realized that I'd wasted a good bit of time that I could have been using towards that.

I know several people who have said similar things, whether or not God has truly called them might be a different question, but who feel called and then are squandering the time that they have been given to pursue that calling.

Now, not everyone is called in the formal ministry, but we are all called to share the gospel with others.

And do not squander the time. The days are evil, as the Bible says. We live in an evil age, and it is only temporary.

Take advantage of every moment you have. If you are certain that Christ has already won the victory, that he is working for the advancement of his kingdom, then you can rest assured that as long as you are obedient, he will bring the results he desires to bring out of it.

And now it speaks of the one who has this confidence, this confidence of salvation from God.

Verse three, you keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.

In perfect peace. Now, we tend to think of peace as being a peaceful mindset.

Well, not only is it that, but it is talking about that fact that there is victory, that there is victory over enemies, and once the enemy has been destroyed, there's peace.

Also, defensively, when enemies attack, we can rest assured that we have protection, that even though they may be able to kill the body, they cannot kill the soul, as it says in Matthew 10, 28.

The one whose mind is stayed on God has that peace.

They have that knowledge that there is no war that can defeat them. There is no enemy, there is no battle that can defeat them.

And then, as a byproduct of that, there is that mental mindset of peace that I was mentioning, that sense of peacefulness.

To know that God has perfectly protected his people is doing exactly as he sees fit.

Now, you have to, if you're going to think this way, stay your mind on God.

This is not something that comes easily. It's not just, once I tell you this truth and you know it intellectually, now you can start acting on it.

Well, certainly, you can start acting on it, but it takes more than that, usually, to sink it into people's hearts so that they really trust it more and more and more, and that is the

Christian life. It is just growing in a greater trust of what God has done.

A lot of people think of it like math, where once you learn, you know, one, once you learn arithmetic, you've kind of got arithmetic down and you can move on to the next subject.

You don't have to worry about, you know, kind of drilling it into your heart or anything like that.

That's not the case. First of all, I got a math degree, and I know that 10 years later,

I don't remember everything, so it's necessary to refresh yourself. Secondly, this is not just an intellectual matter.

This is a spiritual matter. There is sin involved, and God has chosen the means that will glorify him the most in order to assist people in the trust of him to grant them more and more faith, to grant them more and more trust, and he has chosen that means which will glorify him to be his word, so even if we get it for a moment, if we don't stay in God's word, will that mind be stayed on God?

It will not. We won't continue being able to act with the kind of trust that we're supposed to act with because God has not,

God is seeking, God seeks to do this, to grow us in maturity through means that will glorify himself.

Would he be glorified if someone could just come to his word once and then go about their merry way, essentially relying on themselves for a right mindset?

Well, that is just antithetical to the idea of trusting in God. One cannot rely on themselves for the right mindset.

They must rely on God and what he has given, which is his word, the various means that he's given to strengthen us in that, which include gathering like you are here today, gathering and hearing the word of God, praying together, speaking to each other of what

God has done, remembering him in the Lord's Supper. These are all different things that God has given us to strengthen us.

And if we abandon those, then we can anticipate with certainty that also our trust in him will decrease, that as we do not stay ourselves on God, that our peace decrease as we realize less and less that Christ has won the victory and grow further and further away from that truth.

But the more we remind ourselves of that truth, the more we are able to truly act on it.

It says in verse four and five, "'Trust in the Lord forever, "'for the Lord God is an everlasting rock, "'for he has humbled the inhabitants of the height, "'the lofty city.

"'He lays it low, low to the ground, cast it to the dust.'"

You know, in describing God's strength and his ability to defeat all enemies, it speaks of this in a fourfold way.

You know, how many different ways it says it. He has humbled the inhabitants of the height, the lofty city, he lays it low, lays it low to the ground, cast it to the dust.

It three times describes this, emphasizing just how high and mighty

God is. There's this other city that elevates itself against God's city, and God, being high and mighty, casts that city down, casts it down once, twice, thrice, four times, to demonstrate how high he is and how low this enemy city is.

These are the spiritual enemies of God. These are the powers and principalities.

These are the accuser who would use guilt to bring men under condemnation, but through Jesus Christ, through his death and resurrection, we can trust, through faith, have an eternal salvation so that these things can do nothing to us.

Those things are brought low. They are totally, totally destroyed. Now, we can tell that the

Lord is trustworthy here. It talks about him being an everlasting rock. We can tell because of his history.

We can know that he is trustworthy in the future because, in part, by his trustworthiness in the past.

This is how you generally tell whether or not something's trustworthy, whether or not it's worked in the future. Well, God is everlasting.

Hebrews 13, eight says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. You see this also in the

Psalms, where David prays, and he prays, acknowledging all the things that God has done in the past, and he encourages himself by those things, and that is how he is able to trust in the

Lord in his times of difficulties. Now, if you think about something like your car, you know, you've only had your car for I don't know how many years, but you trust it generally, right?

You get in it, and you hurl yourself down the road 70 miles an hour, expecting that you're not gonna die today when you drive in it, but how much of a track record does your car really have compared to the

Lord? His track record's so much further. It stretches off into eternity, and yet, we tend to trust our cars more than we would trust the

Lord when he calls us to obedience. We would trust ourselves to this machine that's fallible, hurling at 70 miles an hour, more than we trust the

God of the universe, who is infallible. We can correct that mindset by recalling what the

Lord has done, by recalling the fact that he has already defeated the enemy, by recalling what he has done in history.

You know, that's important to do. When you pray, take the Psalms as a pattern for your prayer. Pray recalling what

God has done. We think of prayer often as just being a set of petitions where we're only asking

God for things, but it is right to, as David does in the Psalms, to pray recalling what

God has done, thanking him for what he has done, and going ahead and enumerating those blessings to remind ourselves that God is still capable of answering our prayers.

You can remind yourself by reading his word and seeing what he has done for the people in the Bible. You can even remind yourself by thanking him for what he has done in your own life and by looking at what he has done even in church history, even after the

Bible. You know, one very practical application for you here, if you have never read any kind of Christian history, you know, go talk to Pastor Brian or me about something you might be interested in and ask if we have any recommendations for a church history book that you could read or a biography, because you can see what

God has done. He's not stopped working. You can see what he has done even in the past 2 ,000 years, and those things, especially if you talk to someone who studies church history, these things often come to their mind, and they say, you know,

God delivered this person from this persecution, or God delivered this person this way, or he held this person up while he was uttering his dying breath, his last words.

These things can be great encouragements, so I would encourage you to not only look at what

God has done in scripture, but even what he has done in the past 2 ,000 years, and thank him for those things.

It says in verse six, the foot tramples it, the feet of the poor, the steps of the needy.

Now, in part, what is going on here is that talking, Isaiah's talking about how low

God cast down these enemies, how much they have been destroyed. They're so low that even the poor are able to trample them.

However, there's something much more profound that's being said here, too.

Consider what Matthew 5 says about the poor, that they will inherit the kingdom of God. God works, not just on his own.

He is the only one who accomplishes the victory. However, he chooses to work, often through his own people, through the poor and needy who come to him.

That's so surprising. It's so surprising that he would, in demonstrating his greatness, use people.

Why wouldn't he just do it himself? Well, there's something really wonderful about him using the poor, using those who otherwise have no strength to demonstrate his strength.

And moreover, if we are the ones he's trying to demonstrate his strength through, there's something incredibly personal and visceral about seeing that strength being demonstrated in your own self when you know that that strength is not of you.

When you are held up in times of trial, looking to the Lord, Paul talks about when he is weak, then he is strong.

Now, that's not just some nonsensical contradiction. He's talking about his own weakness being the times when

God's strength is most glorified in him. Jesus Christ said, greater works than these will you do.

Now, how is it that we can do greater works than Jesus? He has done the greatest work. And yet, for the vast majority of God's maturing his church, he has chose to work through us, the weak, the poor, the worthless.

He has chosen us. And so we can praise God and thank him for the defense he's given us, for the offense he's given us, for the great victory he has given us through Jesus Christ and also the one that he is accomplishing through us.

You can have great confidence as you come to the Lord, trusting in him, staying your mind on him.

If you stray from the means that God has given us to trust in him, this will become harder and harder to do.

But the more you surround yourself with the people of God, with his word, the more and more you will look to Christ, you'll see his victory, and you will experience him working through you in your own life.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for Jesus Christ, for his death, burial, and resurrection, for this wonderful salvation of eternal life that he has provided, and for what you have done even beyond that, working through your people, building this kingdom to maturity as we await the day that he returns.

God, I pray that you would keep our eyes fixed on him and that our mind would be stayed on you, and that through trust, we would be conformed into the image of your son, that we would grow more and more in holiness and strength.